Maximum PC - USA (2019-07)

maximumpc.com aug 2019 MAXIMUMPC 11

Intel has yet to get up

from the initial impact

the original Zen made.

are rarely used for any length
of time; a card mostly runs
somewhere in between, hence
game clock.
AMD had the usual bar
charts pitching the new cards
against rival Nvidia ones in a
favorable light. The RX 5700
XT is pitched against a GeForce
RTX 2070, and the RX 5700
against a GeForce RTX 2060,
over 10 games. The Navi cards
win across the board, from
a couple of percent to over

20. Noticeably faster games
    include Battlefield 5 and Metro
    Exodus. All the tests were run
    at 1440p, a sweet-spot for Navi
    no doubt; AMD has called it the
    best 1440p GPU in its class.
    Ray tracing? AMD has left that
    path for Nvidia to walk alone.
    There are other tricks, though,
    including Radeon Image
    Sharpening, which sharpens
    areas of low contrast, and

Anti-Lag, a software tweak

that gets the processor to

pause for the GPU to update

a frame. Both cards look to

be competitive mid-range

models, where AMD has

always been strong.

Computex was busy for

AMD, but what was happening

at Intel? It also has a new

microarchitecture: Sunny

Cove. It’s set to appear in

its Ice Lake chips later this

year, but the first chips are

all low-power mobile parts.

Mainstream desktop parts

are still months away. Leaked

early benchmarks show an

IPC bump of 18 percent or

better over Skylake. It has new

Gen11 integrated graphics,

hardware-accelerated AI,

built-in Wi-Fi 6.0, and more.

But it leaves an embarrassing

gap until the new desktop

chips are ready. What we do

have is impressive, and about

30 laptops are expected with

Ice Lake in time for the holiday.

What can Intel do? It did

what it always does: It made

a good show of what it had,

then released a special-

edition fastest-ever chip. We

saw the Core i9-9990XE a few

months ago; now we have

the i9-9900KS, a carefully

selected 9900K, overclocked

to run at 5GHz on all cores, at

all times. Bingo! We have the

world’s fastest gaming chip.

The 9900KS will be available

later this year, in limited

Ryzen 9 3950X Ryzen 9 3900X Ryzen 7 3800X Ryzen 7 3700X Ryzen 5 3600X Ryzen 5 3600

Cores 16 12 8 8 6 6

Threads 32 24 16 16 12 12

TDP (Watts) 105 105 105 65 95 65

Base Frequency (GHz) 3.5 3.8 3.9 3.6 3.8 3.

Boost Frequency (GHz) 4.7 4.6 4.5 4.4 4.4 4.

Total Cache (MB) 72 70 36 36 35 35

PCIe 4.0 Lanes (CPU + X570) 40 40 40 40 40 40

Thermal Solutions Wraith Prism RGB Wraith Prism RGB Wraith Prism RGB Wraith Prism RGB Wraith Spire Wraith Stealth

Expected Retail Price (USD) $749 $499 $399 $329 $249 $

Expected Availability September, 2019 July 7, 2019 July 7, 2019 July 7, 2019 July 7, 2019 July 7, 2019

Third-Gen AMd r yzen deskTop processor Lineup And AvAiLAbiLiTy

numbers, and at an as-yet

unknown eye-watering price.

The battle between AMD

and Intel now enters the next

round, and Intel has yet to

get up from the initial impact

the original Zen made. Zen 2

merely strengthens AMD’s

position. Its chips offer great

value for money, and—bar

Intel’s “specials”—are every

bit as fast. It’s not over, and Ice

Lake is shaping up nicely, but

its development is painfully

slow. Computex 2019 belonged

to AMD, and it looks like the

rest of the year will too. –Cl

The worst kept secret of Zen 2, the 16-core range-topper: a $

chip that thrashes anything Intel has at twice the money.

It may be horribly late, and starting life as low-power mobile
chips, but Intel’s Ice Lake architecture is looking good so far.